Don’t Dull Your Love Down — Someone Will Love You For You

Young relationships used to be about being swept off one’s feet or sweeping someone off theirs. You were caught in a whirlwind of affection brought on by someone who made every effort to win your love. It was exciting, not painful. Those who loved in the era of grand gestures were made to feel wanted. To feel extraordinary.

Now, the early stages of a relationship are a competition to see who cares less. If you text back too quickly; if you want to cuddle after sex; if you make a bold move because you know the spark is there—you’re overbearing. You can’t care too much, or you’ll scare the other person away.

Those of us who live our lives according to emotion, those of us who follow our hearts—we are ruined by this expectation of an impersonal buildup to a relationship that depends on carefully planned out texts and façades that erode as slowly as mountains. We fall in love quickly; we feel everything deeply. When we can’t share that, the fire of love suffocates.

Everyone needs someone who loves them for who they are. Everyone wants a person with whom to share their raw, uncensored thoughts. Why does that stage only come after months of “casual” dates, months of feigned nonchalance, months of holding those thoughts back from one another? Share your thoughts and your feelings—whoever abandons you for that was never worth your time to begin with.

They say the ones who care less are stronger. That they draw less pain their way. That their lives are less complicated or less dramatic.

They may feel less pain, but they also feel less joy. They live like they’re strolling through fields while we ride rollercoasters. They’ll never get the chance to have that one-in-a-million relationship where two people fit together in a way that appears almost divine, because they’ll never care about anyone—or let anyone care about them—nearly enough.

When you yield to your heart, yes, you open yourself up to pain. But you also allow yourself the greatest happiness that you can feel. And—perhaps most importantly of all—you become free. Someone out there will love you for it.

Your life is too valuable to waste on people who think you care too much. Those people will never be able to love you the way you want to be loved. Embrace your passion, accept the magnitude of your feelings, and someone will come along who loves all of you with an intensity and a fierce devotion you never thought possible.

Let yourself feel as much as you can, and make the most of your life. Your passion will make everything so much richer and brighter than it will be if you let modern dating culture smother you. You deserve for your life to be a work of art.